Drinking With Hemingway

By David O’Neal (Class of 1960)

The day before we met Hemingway the skiing was good. It was snowing and the
going was sometimes hard. But we were young and strong and had skied well in
spite of the snowstorm. The snow was soft and the falling down was part of it
and the skiing was good.

Doug Bradshaw, Tim Houghton and I were juniors at Princeton. We had come to
Sun Valley to ski during Christmas vacation in 1958. The Bradshaws lived in
Pocatello and had a small cottage in Ketchum a few miles from Sun Valley. Doug
and his brother Ben, and their St. Bernard Fritz, and Tim and I shared the
Brashaws’ cottage. Tim was the best skier among us. He was an eccentric and a
wild card and lived and skied on the edge. Tim majored in English and was
writing a novel. He took creative writing from the British novelist Kingsley
Amis who was a visiting fellow at Princeton that year. When he graduated he went
to London to study under Amis and died there in an apartment house fire.

Hemingway had been renting a house in Ketchum from the Heiss family. The
Heisses were friends of the Bradshaws. The morning after the skiing in the snow
storm, which had been good, Marge Heiss called Doug. She said Hemingway was
leaving her house and that if we hurried we might intercept him. We got into the
car and drove to the Heiss’ old log cabin which was covered with snow.

Hemingway came down the path which was a narrow cut between five feet of
snow on both sides. He filled the space and looked like a grizzly bear. Just
like in his photographs. Hemingway was cradling four bottles of Wild Turkey
Bourbon. Not one bottle, not two bottles, but four bottles. He was not surprised
to see us and must have been warned. We were slack-jawed at the great writer but
somehow got introduced all around. Hemingway asked us for a ride to his house on
the other side of town which he and his wife Mary had just moved into. We were
struck dumb at this turn of events and piled back into the Bradshaws’ Chevy
station wagon. Doug drove and Ben was in the front passenger seat. Tim and I
flanked Hemingway and his whisky bottles. Fritz rested his slobbering head on
Hemingway’s shoulder.

It was eleven in the morning and snowing lightly. Hemingway was in a festive
mood. He said we should stop at the Tram, a local bar and restaurant, where he
would buy us all a drink. We parked in front of the Tram and walked to the door.
It was closed. Hemingway said, “Fuck it. Let’s go to my place.” As we
walked back to the car a young bug-eyed professor hailed us and Hemingway
invited him to come too. Doug momentarily lost control of the car and skidded
around a corner. Hemingway said, “Damn good slalom turn.”

Mary was not at home. Hemingway said to himself, “Where the hell is
Mary?” She was not at home so Hemingway made the Wild Turkey drinks and told
us they were “the best goddamn drinks you’ll ever have.” The drinks were
strong, especially in the morning, and they were good. Hemingway stood in the
living room because, he told us, he had a back injury from a plane crash in
Africa years before. We knew that Hemingway wrote mostly standing up and we saw
his tall desk in the adjoining study. Mary came home before long with Taylor
Williams. She took over the bartending duties and her drinks were strong and
good too. She must have been used to making strong drinks for Hemingway.

We three undergraduates were wise enough and polite enough not to ask
Hemingway anything about his writing. Or we were too shy to ask. Not so the
young English professor who we found out taught at Northwestern. He asked a
couple of silly questions. Hemingway did not reply. Then the professor referred
to Across the River and Into the Woods. “For Christ’s sake it’s Trees not
Woods,” said Hemingway. Then the professor asked something about Henry
Morgan in To Have and Have Not. “I never answer that kind of bullshit,”
Hemingway said.

Tim did ask Hemingway about Carlos Baker’s book Hemingway: The Writer
as Artist. “It’s all fucked up,” said Hemingway. He said that Baker
thought Jake Barnes’ sexual frustration in The Sun Also Rises was because he
had had his balls shot off. Hemingway said Barnes had had his “cock shot off.
His cock, not his balls. Now that’s real frustration.” Then he advised us
never to make an important decision or enter an important contest or sporting
event without first getting laid. “It clears the head and concentrates the
mind,” Hemingway said. He said we should never take the advice of a Catholic
priest because “anyone who doesn’t get laid can’t be trusted to give good
advice.” Hemingway then retreated to the doorway of his study with his friend
Taylor Williams.

Taylor Williams was a hard-drinking skirt-chaser twelve years older than
Hemingway and was Hemingway’s hunting and fishing guide in and around Sun
Valley. Hemingway liked Williams and admired his skill as a guide. The two
friends had known each other for years and Williams sometimes visited Hemingway
in Key West and Cuba. They were good friends. Hemingway was a pallbearer at
Williams’ funeral in 1959 and was buried next to Williams in the Ketchum
cemetery.

We listened to Hemingway and Williams talk about the Battle of the
Bulge. Hemingway had been at the battle as a war correspondent and Williams had
lost a son there. Hemingway said the U. S. Army Officer Corps was caught
completely off guard when the Germans advanced. “The battle was one big
fuckup,” Hemingway said. “One big fuckup. For a while the brass had no
goddamn idea what the hell to do.” Hemingway and Williams talked about the war
for some time. By then we were drunk and couldn’t keep up with the
conversation so it was time to leave and we said goodbye and goodbye to
Hemingway and to Williams and goodbye to Mary, thanking them for the time and
the drinks, which we thought were real good and strong, and staggered out the
door into the snow which was still falling lightly and slipped and staggered
around a bit before falling into the car and somehow Doug drove us back. We were
too drunk to ski that afternoon. Meeting Hemingway was good,
real good. The drinks were good too.

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